“Good night, Miss Aris.” His voice followed me until the wind stole it away. My heeled boots clopped on the platform. The white line ran by my side. Beyond it, darkness loomed, so thick it was as though the entire world was dark.
A metallic ting rang in the tracks, signaling the weight of the train rumbling over them. My heart thumped harder. I pulled my coat off and turned its arms inside out, revealing the bright red silk lining.
Faster. It was almost time. The tracks groaned, and far ahead, a beam of light pierced the night. It started small and quiet, like all important things, but grew bigger with every breath, every footfall, every heartbeat. The wind gathered, whipping dust around me and lashing my hair free of its pins and curls. It was no ordinary wind, like this was no ordinary train. There was magic in it that made the blood pump quicker and set my teeth on edge. My wrist warmed, the station’s mark reacting either to the presence bearing down on us or the fear and anticipation spilling into my veins.
Ahead, the platform sloped off into the night. I stopped and lifted my coat, stretching its splash of red between my hands like a flag. The train’s single beam flew over me and flooded the world in white. Brake. The train was huge and hungry, like a primordial creature made of iron. Brake now. Wheels squealed, metal on metal. The train wailed its horrible sound, but it was slowing.
The train heaved to a halt, huge and black, all iron and engineering, with wheels twice my size. Steam blasted over me and through my clothes. I did not greet this beast like I did the guests’ train. Two black carriages clunked to a halt behind the engine. No windows. Windows weren’t needed for cattle.
“Lynher!”
Jack’s shout bounced around the train’s boiling groans and ticking metal, but the steam had swallowed me. He couldn’t see me inside the boiling white clouds, not even with his vampire eyes.
I grasped the carriage door’s cold iron handle, planted a boot on the carriage step, and heaved the huge rolling door aside, holding my breath, waiting to see their faces and tell them they were safe, that we just had to do one more thing but they needed to hurry.
The steam cleared.
I blinked at the sight inside the carriage.
“No…”
My heart fell.
The carriage was… empty.
No, no, no… this couldn’t be.
I leaned in and scanned the dark corners. Nothing. Not even a scrap of clothing. The carriage was pristine. That was… impossible.
I dropped from the step, raced to the second carriage, and threw open its door, finding it as empty as its twin.
The clouds of steam fell away. Time had slipped through my fingers. I should have ushered them through the secret door. They should have been on their way to Kensey, who would have greeted them with a smile. They should have been safe.
“Lynher!” Jack strode through the fading steam and slowed as I swung a vicious glare on him.
“This is you!” I snapped, raising my voice over the engine’s hissing and huffing. “It’s your doing!”
He slowed, his limp making his stupid steps wooden. He grabbed the carriage handle and peered inside. “I don’t understand. Where are—”
“—the children!”
“Where are they?” He set his cane down against the carriage side, grabbed both handles, and climbed inside.
I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t right. Why have empty carriages stop here? The children had to be here somewhere. They had to be. I entered behind Jack and watched him limp into the darkness where the lantern light didn’t reach.
“This isn’t right,” he said.
“Where are they!” I plucked my knives from their hidden places. “Where are the children? What have you done with them?”
He scowled back at me, only marginally surprised to see the knives in my hands. I knew how I looked, how I sounded. Certainly nothing like the Lynher Aris I’d shown him. “Oh, we both have double lives, Ghost. Did you think I was just a pretty human put here for your enjoyment?”
“Lynher… wait…” He stepped closer, hand outstretched.
“Stay back, and stop calling me Lynher. You don’t know me.”
The sliding door rattled on its running wheels. I glimpsed a figure, heard Jack shout, then the door slammed shut, plunging Jack and me into darkness.
No, no, no…
I rammed a shoulder against the wooden door, got my knives in the gap, and twisted, trying to lever the panels open. The door didn’t budge.
Jack’s icy presence prickled my skin. It was too dark to see him, but he was close.
“Lynher, step aside… let me.” His hand landed on my shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” I slashed blindly, missing.
The carriage jerked, pulling on its couplings, and shunted back again, rocking my balance. The figure outside, the one who had locked us in. I knew him, but he couldn’t have done this. “Etienne, open the door!”
Metal wheels slipped on the tracks, screaming until they hooked up and pulled forward, jerking the carriages again. This time, they kept on shunting and grinding. The train huffed and grumbled and growled, moving off.
“Etienne!”
I couldn’t find any handle or seal. There was nothing to grab a hold of—no lock, no hinge.
Metal wheels galloped along the tracks in a rhythmic clatter-clatter that sounded like a huge metal heartbeat, and I knew from the ice in my veins that I’d left the station grounds.
Oh gods.
I couldn’t be away from the station, away from Kensey. This couldn’t be happening.
I pressed my hands against the carriage side, feeling gouges and missing pieces beneath my soft fingertips. I wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t meant for me. The children… where were the children?
And then the truth fell like an axe.
I was the high-value cargo.
Chapter 12
Day
Light poured through all the tiny holes in the carriage sides, thrusting through the air like spears. The light moved and shifted, and when the shafts stroked across Jack’s clothes, he fidgeted, trying to move away. Sunlight made vampires uncomfortable. Too much would slowly kill him. He deserved it.
After pacing like an animal stuck in a cage, I’d tucked myself in the corner farthest from the overseer, keeping my knives close at hand. If he closed his eyes, if he slept, I considered it my duty to drive the blades into vulnerable parts of him. I’d imagined little else over the last few hours. Where best to strike on his body? Would cutting his throat work? I’d have to be quick or he’d overpower me. Then it occurred to me that wherever we were going, if we arrived and Ghost was dead at my feet, my reception would be worse—if it could get any worse. So I watched him stare at the carriage wall instead, flinching away from the light.
The carriage rocked and rumbled, not slowing. We had to be miles from the station. Kensey would be worried. And Etienne…
Etienne had done this. How or why? It made no sense.
Jack dropped his head back, eyes closing. “You need a better assistant.” He still had a lofty, untouchable tone, as if being trapped in a carriage were a mild inconvenience. Considering how old he had to be, maybe it was. Maybe this was dull to him?
“Don’t you usually sleep in the day?” I rolled one of the knives in my hand, watching the light play on the smooth blade.
“Usually.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
He looked over. “Because you’re caressing those knives like you have a plan for them.”
Was the formidable Ghost afraid of me? I smiled, but he merely sighed. His forehead was creased enough to convey his annoyance, but he certainly wasn’t afraid.
I looked at the knife in my left hand, testing its weight. I could throw it. It might even hit him in the heart. “Would it kill you?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
It wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have survived this long if a little throwing knife could take him down.
I looked a
way, preferring to admire the pinprick holes letting the light in. Maybe Etienne shutting me in here had been a mistake. Maybe he’d meant to shut Jack inside. But Etienne had known I was here. He’d done this on purpose.
And now Etienne was at the station, pretending everything was fine, knowing what he’d done. Someone must have gotten to him. One of the Dark Ones. Was it Lilith? But if he’d been coerced, why not tell me?
He’d fooled me, that was why, like Ghost had fooled me.
I should have seen it in Etienne. He’d been so… nice. And Kensey had vouched for him, loved him even.
I really wasn’t a very good host. If Gerome were here, he’d tell me what to do, but he was dead, and soon, I probably would be too.
Climbing to my feet, I examined the door, its seals now visible. It didn’t look like it should hold together so well. There was no lock, no keyhole, and no handle. I’d tried digging my blades in and levering the door open, but it hadn’t budged an inch. The internal scratches were more visible in the light too, like this carriage had once held animals and they’d clawed at the walls to escape. I tried not to think too hard on what that meant.
“Where is the train taking us?” I asked, glancing behind me to see Jack still tucked in his corner, watching me.
The ordeal had dislodged a few bangs over his hazel eyes. In the dappled daylight, he could still pass as human, perhaps more so now that he wore a weary look in the lines around his mouth and eyes.
“One of two places. Camp Altoona is the closest, but we’re likely heading to Maryland.”
“Shouldn’t you know where it’s going? Weren’t you supposed to be on this train?”
He spread his hands. “Things have changed.”
He’d been as surprised as me to find the carriages empty. “You were expecting children in the carriages?”
“I was.” No hesitation. No sign of guilt. Soulless drone.
Unable to look at him anymore, I returned to examining the door for a weakness. “Wherever the kids are, I hope they’re safe from the likes of you.”
His laughter crawled over me. “You don’t see it. Trapped in the station your entire life, things must have been very simple for you.”
“I’m not trapped. The station is my home.”
“You don’t think it controls you?”
“What?” When I looked at him again, the bastard smiled. “You don’t know me, and you don’t know how my life works.”
“Have you ever left its grounds? Set foot beyond the white line?”
“Yes.” I planted a hand on my hip.
He hesitated a beat. “For more than a few minutes?”
“Yes.” Maybe. When I was small. I didn’t remember, but I must have. There had been times when Kensey had found me, and the time Rafe had found me. I had been beyond the white line enough to know I never wanted to go beyond it again.
Yet here I was, miles from it, trapped in a box with a real monster, my only weapons two throwing knives. My clothing didn’t have secret pockets out here, and I’d left my coat on the platform. If Jack decided he wanted me gone, I had little to defend myself with.
So why hadn’t he attacked me? He surely knew I wasn’t the Lynher Aris he’d been expecting. I’d said too much on the platform and revealed too much while dosed up on Caine’s venom. If he was so inclined, he could put all my puzzle pieces together. He’d have to be a fool not to know I worked for the resistance in a roundabout way. The vampires’ missing cargo after their trains had passed through the station. A brother who didn’t exist. The death of his puppet, albeit by Lilith’s hand.
Jack knew too much.
I couldn’t let him return to his kind.
Somehow, I had to kill him. To protect the station and Kensey.
Gods, Kensey had fallen for Etienne.
I had to get back.
Kensey had to know before Etienne hurt him.
I pressed my free hand flat against the carriage door and bumped my forehead against the wood. Outside the station, I really was just human, just food and sport to the Dark Ones. I wasn’t killing anyone. My illusion of strength had fallen the second the train had left the station. I was prey now.
Jack continued to watch, his eyebrow raised in silent question. Hate churned my empty stomach. Maybe hate was all I needed. I hoped so, because I had nothing else.
Stabbing the knife into the door seal, I wiggled it some more. Just a crack. If I could make some progress and get both blades in, I might be able to pop the door open—
“The carriages are spelled. They only open at designated locations.”
The hate churned some more. Why hadn’t he told me that before? “So, you’ve watched me try for hours to what… entertain you?”
“Isn’t that your job?” His mouth twitched.
I’d never wanted to throw my knives more. He appeared relaxed, tucked in his corner, but like Caine, he could spring from that spot and tear open my throat in a blink, and there was no station magic here to save me at the last second. I’d bleed out across these boards, drunk on venom, and he’d laugh while I died.
I returned to my corner and paced that end of the carriage, listening to my boots strike the boards. “What happens when we reach our destination?”
His gaze tracked me. “You’re too old for the farms—”
I flung a knife. It was in my hand and flying free without a second’s thought behind it. I just needed him to bleed, to hurt. But the carriage rocked, and the knife twanged off the side—and he was gone.
My back slammed into the carriage panel. My head smacked against the side too. His iron-cold arm lodged under my chin, pinning me. Jack was all I could see. His handsome face had hollowed. The shadows had sucked all warmth out of him. His eyes pulled me in, my head spinning from their charm, but it was the vicious fangs that snagged my glare. Two primacy fangs curved to latch on and not let go. Next to those, two smaller teeth, just as sharp—those delivered the venom. One bite and I’d be his, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
“Attack me,” he breathed, his mouth close to mine, our breaths shared, “and I will return the favor, Miss Aris.”
Most vampires were beyond speech by this point. Feral and blood-driven, as soon as they dropped their civilized act, they turned into mindless beasts driven by desire. But this bastard had full control. It showed in his eyes, still startlingly normal.
I spat in his face.
He blinked, and his features performed a strange combination of a frown and grimace. He eased back, studiously plucked a handkerchief from inside his jacket, wiped the spittle from his cheek, then tucked the handkerchief away, every move precise. Then he limped back toward his corner. I swallowed, wedged against the side, trembling with fear and rage and the knowledge that I was somehow alive. This wasn’t how vampires behaved. What was wrong with him? A game? Maybe I was his entertainment, something to pass the time before we arrived at my final destination.
“You sicken me.” I spoke with venom of my own, letting him hear the rage and injustice. When he simply slid back down the carriage side and wedged himself into the corner again, the rage grew hotter. “Your kind is a scourge on this world. You had no right to it. You came and you took and you killed and now look at it. You destroyed it.”
He drew his good leg up and balanced his wrist on his knee. “Get it all out. Say what you’ve always wanted to say, because after we arrive, you’ll have no tongue to speak.”
I was going to die, but it wouldn’t be in vain. I’d tell him what nobody dared. “The vampires’ reign cannot last.” I pulled on my sleeves, straightening my clothes, and braved a few steps closer.
“It has held well enough for the last five decades.”
“You feed and you consume and you’ll do that until there’s nothing left! The Dark Ones won’t stand for it. Someone will rise up against your queen.”
“And that will be better how? The fae, do you think they’d be kinder? Or the chaos-loving jinn perhaps? They’d likely set the whole
world ablaze. Maybe you’d prefer a demon overlord. You seemed quite attached to that incubus—”
“Anything is better than you.”
He chuckled. “For someone who has seen nothing of the world, your worldly knowledge is astounding.”
“And I suppose you know everything?”
He picked at fluff or dust on his sleeve. “Far from it. I don’t know what will happen to me when this train stops, for example.”
He didn’t? “Why not?”
He smiled. Apparently, that smile was all the answer I was getting.
Folding my arms, I slid down the carriage side and propped myself against the corner. I couldn’t die here, with him. I wasn’t finished. I had too much to do, too much to fix. My staff weren’t ready for my absence. They didn’t know what to do. Would they leave? Without them, the station couldn’t host any guests. Nobody would stop there. It would fall apart. And Kensey… Oh, Kensey. He’d be okay. He’d have to be. Would he stay? Would he become the host? He wouldn’t survive the Dark Ones. He’d say something that would get him killed. No, he had connections outside. He’d leave too.
“Why were you reading about phantoms?” Jack asked.
We’d been silent for some time, the rhythmic beat of the train’s wheels lulling my mind far from the hell I was trapped in. But his question rudely yanked me back into the present. “I don’t have to speak to you.”
“True.” He shifted so his back rested against the front of the carriage, angling himself toward me. “We could spend the rest of this journey in silence, but it would surely feel longer.” He waited to see if I’d answer, and then continued. “The incubus you seem attached to. Did he lose his soul to a phantom?”
“No.”
“You’re a good liar, but right now, you’re exposed and hurting, and your lies are easily unraveled. Gerome taught you well.”
“You don’t get to say his name,” I hissed.
“He was always so charming while sharpening his knives behind his back. You’re so much like him. He taught you to believe the lies the station shovels you, the lies he reinforced.”
Twilight Seeker: Daybreaker #1 Page 10
